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Tracking New York Rents and Asking Prices Over a Century

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This week, real estate appraiser, Curbed graph guru, blogger, newsletter writer, and columnist Jonathan Miller dives into the city's real estate history.

Back in 2011, I embarked on a fun research project for Douglas Elliman's 100th anniversary, in which I traced how sales prices and rents changed since the 1910s. I explain in detail how I did the research here, but I ended up with a very loose proxy to represent price per square foot for sales and average monthly rents during each decade. Since three years has passed, I updated the results to include 2015. I didn't present the trends with inflation adjustments because I generally don't do that—but trust me, the same pattern emerges.

It's clear that all hell broke loose (price-wise) in the 1970s—as did hair length and bell-bottom sizes and NYC's bankruptcy problems. I don't have a great rationale for the surge in prices—I won't give the valid excuse that I was only 10 years old back then—so I'd love to hear from Curbed readers what caused the trend.

· Miller Time archive [Curbed]
· All Renters Week 2015 coverage [Curbed]